Gambling
Related Essays and Reports by Andrew W Scott

World Series of Poker - Will the
Main Event beat last year's US $87,730,000 prize pool?

June 5th 2007

It's that time of year again - World
Series of Poker time.

Since Australia's own Joe Hachem won
the US$7,500,000 first prize of the 2005 WSOP main
event, interest in the WSOP from the Australian poker
fraternity has been huge. The first ever WSOP main
event for which a cash prize was paid was played in
1971, between a mere six people, in a smoke filled
room at the spiritual home of World Poker - the Horseshoe
Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. It was won by Johny
Moss, defeating Puggy Pearson, and pocketing the winner-takes-all
US$30,000 prize in the process, serious money in the
early 1970s.

But neither Moss nor Pearson could
possibly have imagined what the future would hold.
The table below shows the incredible explosion that
poker would experience over the next 35 years. Last
year the main event took an incredible 8,773 entrants,
each coughing up the US$10,000 entry fee the event
has had since 1972 (in 1971 the entry fee was "only"
US$5,000). That's a total prize pool of US$87,730,000!

It is now played in an enormous hall
with a 3,000 player capacity at the Rio casino in
Las Vegas. It took eight days for the 2006 champion,
Jamie Gold, to overcome his 8,772 opponents in the
main event, and claim the US$12,000,000 first prize.
The main event is of course no-limit Texas Hold'em
Poker, the granddaddy of all poker variants. The WSOP
is now so huge that it takes over a month just to
conduct the schedule of 54 lead-up events, before
even starting the main event. Although this year's
WSOP started last Saturday, it will not be until 6
July before the main event kicks-off. This year "the
big one" will be a 12 day marathon, slated to finally
end on 17 July (well, if previous years are a guide,
it will really be more like 4am the next morning).

There has been much speculation about
how many entrants there will be in this year's main
event, with some bookmakers even taking bets on it.
While poker is exploding world-wide, it has hit a
serious snag with George W Bush signing the Unlawful
Internet Gambling Enforcement Act last year. Thousands
of last year's entries won their seats in the main
event by winning satellite tournaments at Internet
Poker sites. It is unclear how the WSOP will deal
with such satellite winners this year. Some pundits
are predicting as few as 3,500 entrants, with others
as many as 15,000. A well known poker website is running
a "nearest the pin" competition on guessing the number
of entrants. So far it has taken 334 guesses, with
the average guess being 12,992. Most experts are predicting
fewer than last year's 8,773 entrants, but last Saturday's
lead-up event shocked them. It had a field of an astounding
2,998 entries - the highest ever for a non-main event
poker tournament in the world. In fact, it was the
third biggest poker tournament in all time history,
after the 2006 and 2007 main events. The Rio casino
can "only" cope with 3,000 entrants at a time, and
has scheduled three rounds of day one, implying that
they expect no more than 9,000 will enter the main
event. Watch this space!